


Pull Back In

by Checkerbox



Series: heartfelt [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: (although they get back together like immediately), Break Up, Dorian Pavus Has Issues, M/M, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Here Lies the Abyss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:36:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28773960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Checkerbox/pseuds/Checkerbox
Summary: Dorian does not handle what he witnessed at Adamant very well.
Relationships: Male Inquisitor/Dorian Pavus
Series: heartfelt [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1587253
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Pull Back In

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, this is one of the conversations I didn’t actually think I was ever going to get to. Buuut I really wanted there to be more of an actual argument over Adamant than there was (also I was disappointed that one only happened if you took Dorian into the Fade with you). 
> 
> I expect this to be the last short I post for a while, as I dearly wish to finish my long fic.

By the time Trevelyan had finally bundled up enough nerve to visit Dorian in the library, it was hard to walk through it without stepping on a book.

He stood there for a moment, looking them over. Texts and treatises on each Divine, on Chantry celebrations, doctored history, the Fade. Things that they had once laughed over, the kind of trite nonsense that the Inquisition was constantly receiving as gifts and donations from people who were either concerned about its direction or simply looking for a place to offload their junk. Nothing important, but…still, they had looked so nice on the shelves with their gold-banded spines…

Apprentices and research assistants lingered over the mess with eyes of uncertain terror that undercut the calm façade Dorian was currently putting on as he sat in his chair, one leg crossed over the other with a book open in his hand. The moment Trevelyan entered the round hallway several of them simply left, which did not bode well for the impending conversation.

His mark had gotten worse.

Solas had inspected it soon after leaving the Fade and confirmed that yes, it was entirely Trevelyan’s fault. That was, apparently, the sort of thing he could expect from tearing open large holes in reality, even if it was to save their lives, and he probably shouldn’t do it again. Trevelyan had spent his nights after it poking and tracing the bright scar, how it had stretched from the center of his palm down to the edge of his wrist. In time, he would see it as a nice souvenir—now it was an unwanted disruption from the normality he had adjusted to since the Conclave, since Haven had made the green light so much brighter and more active.

Disruption was the theme of the way back from Adamant. Cole going through a breakdown over the thought of being bound, Cassandra agonizing over how this would be told to future generations, Sera hitting him and crying for having her mind nearly sheared, the Iron Bull requiring “percussive therapy” to stop muttering about demons every five minutes, _Varric…_

Well. It was hard to even look at Varric, still. Every time Trevelyan had tried to visit him, he had been locked up writing letters.

Now this. Now Dorian. Dorian who had barely said a word to him for almost a week, and was now enacting some horrible vengeance upon the library in retaliation for…something.

Trevelyan cleared his throat and smiled as pleasantly as he was able.

No response whatsoever.

The mildest stirrings of irritation dug into his mind. So after everything they had endured, he was going to be difficult?

But “difficult” was a synonym for “upset”, so Trevelyan brushed his feelings aside. “It’s very distressing what you have done to the library, Dorian,” he tried.

“Oh, is that what you find distressing?” Dorian shut his book and stood so abruptly that it was clear he hadn’t actually been reading. “You almost get _eaten_ by a dragon, thrown from miles high into the _Fade,_ nearly have your life essence _scooped out_ by a giant spider demon, and what you find distressing is me abusing your endless Chantry propaganda?” He punctuated this by throwing his own book heartily to the floor. It slid up to Trevelyan’s boot.

The silence after that was captivating. Trevelyan shuffled, looking down at the fallen text. “Well. Not the propaganda _specifically_.”

“Ah, I see. Let’s pick something you actually like, shall we?” He moved to rifle through the shelf where Trevelyan had placed all of his favored reading books so that they would be in easy reach of Dorian’s alcove. “ _Adventures of the Black Fox._ Complete and utter garbage.” Dorian tossed it over his shoulder, not breaking eye contact. It bounced against the wall with a thud. “How about that?”

Like a conditioned response Trevelyan could feel his claws start to come out, forcing his lips closed as his smile widened. “We have established that it is me you are angry at.”

“Such genius intuition.”

“This might not have occurred to you, Dorian, given all the other wonderous thoughts flitting about inside your brain,” he said brightly, “but instead of stewing and snapping at me you could simply say what you are angry about so that I may be contrite for you.”

“You and your _honeyed words_ ,” Dorian sneered, pushing past him to go to a shelf outside the alcove. “I am so _fortunate_ that you are considerate of my _feelings._ ”

“It’s hard not to be when you dump them all over the floor.” He could see the fury in Dorian’s eyes when he looked back, and remembered himself. “—This isn’t how I meant to start this conversation, wait—"

“No, by all means, take more time!” The library was almost empty now, the only person daring to continue reading at their table was Helisma, occasionally glancing in their direction with vague disinterest. “And when you are ready, I will be here prepared to hang on your every word like some _cloying sycophant_ , because clearly I don’t have anything better to do with my time than _wait for you_.”

Trevelyan tried to respond to that several times, but different parts of his sentence kept demanding to be said first. After some spluttering he chose to instead not let Dorian change the topic. “This is about Adamant, right?”

He received a sneer for his trouble. “I would think you are quite talked out regarding what happened at Adamant. Considering you have spoken to everyone under the bloody sun, even _bloody Blackwall_ about what happened there. Everyone _except. Me._ ”

“I thought it might be upsetting for you,” Trevelyan weakly defended himself.

“That’s never stopped you before.”

“That was _different_.” He brushed a hand through his hair—it was longer than he’d like, unkempt from traveling to the Wastes and back. In addition to upending his personal relationships the battle had also, apparently, decided to ruin his grooming regimen, and his thoughts were similarly disorganized. “Look at you now, look at how you’re acting. I just know it’s easier to manage people when they’re—”

“ _Manage_ me?”

Trevelyan’s mouth snapped shut.

Dorian’s eyes were on him then, in a smoldering way that might have been attractive in any other context, but now rather gave the impression that he was preparing to set him on fire. If there was anyone still lingering in the library before, they were gone now. Even Helisma seemed to notice the absence of one of her research assistants and left to follow them.

And then he said curtly, turning back to the shelf. “…Speaking under duress is not your strong suit, I know.”

Trevelyan felt a familiar love inside him like water, spreading in his chest, and he blurted, “I talked to everyone else first because they were upset about themselves, about what they felt, and it had nothing to do with me. It’s easier when things have nothing to do with me. I don’t know how to—I don’t know how to make it better when it has to do with me. I didn’t want to make it worse. I would hate—would hate that.”

It was more than he liked to say in one block. It had taken many lessons to drill the babbling out of him—to know how to react to the other person, rather than stumbling through until your entire foot was in your mouth. But Dorian always pulled the words out of him anyway.

Even in absentia. “Dorian? …You’re being very quiet. It’s unlike you.” Still nothing, still just tense shoulders and the back of his head. “Dorian, please say something.”

There was movement in the line of Dorian’s body, a soft whisper of breath. Maybe a sigh? Or more like a gasp.

“I think,” he finally said, voice thick and choked, “That maybe this was a mistake.”

“What was a mistake?”

“Us. This. This was a mistake.”

Trevelyan felt his mind shut down. “What?”

“Am I not speaking Common?” Suddenly Dorian was turning around, the quiet fury now a rage. “You! Me! Us! It’s not working! I don’t want to do it anymore. I can’t. So it’s over _.”_

The words didn’t make any sense.

When Trevelyan didn’t move, staring at him with his face a blank mask, Dorian let out a cry of frustration and stormed out himself.

A few minutes passed.

At a loss, and feeling pitifully flimsy, he called Helisma back to help him put the books away.

Over?

They didn’t talk for a few more days after that. In all fairness, there was another mission upcoming that they needed to prepare for, a small breather compared to their last but still important nonetheless. Trevelyan for his part wandered Skyhold in a dazed stupor in his free time, constantly approaching the library only to remember and then have to change route again. He had several dreams about Adamant, about being laughed at by the Nightmare, about drowning in turgid pools of dark water, and finding spiders that screamed with the voices of innocents as he picked their legs off one by one, and when he woke in the morning he would be alone with no one to tell.

Well, he told Solas about them. But it wasn’t a fresh recounting. Solas theorized that what was left of the Nightmare was feeding on him, but in all honesty if Trevelyan had to describe his emotional state both asleep and awake, he would not have reached for “fear”.

Sometimes he forgot about Dorian for a whole hour at a time before his thoughts would trail back, which he thought was a good sign that he’d eventually be able to move on, probably. But it still didn’t feel entirely real, and so moving on was not something he was actively trying to do.

“I just don’t…know why?” he said to Sera in the tavern, sitting at a table covered in scratches.

“’Cause Dorian’s a tit, that’s why. And not the good kind,” she said as she took his mug and guzzled its contents for him. “I’ll put a gardener in his undies for you.”

The mission came up, and of course Dorian was coming because he was needed, because he was one of the best mages they had on hand. He had been worried they would devolve into arguments once they encountered each other again, but Dorian was civil, if clipped, and he didn’t even object when Trevelyan spent most of their travel time staring at him, suddenly hurting.

Obviously he shouldn’t have been doing that, and it was unusual for him to mourn a relationship’s loss like this. Any time someone broke up with him he knew better than to stay where he wasn’t wanted, and always made sure to move on as quickly as possible, no matter how vicious or wounding the split had been.

Only.

It was.

Dorian.

…But Dorian apparently didn’t want him anymore?

It wasn’t entirely unprecedented but it ripped him up nonetheless. He’d never gotten to the part where you give your heart away before. He didn’t know if he could get it back. He didn’t know if he _wanted_ it back.

The bewilderment gave way under the sadness, and even his hunting was listless. When Blackwall started ruining the meat with another one of his stews, Trevelyan ate in silence away from the warmth and the merry-making and the light. He told them he was just offended at the Markham cooking. They all suspected differently.

It was dark, and it was cold, at least until Dorian sat down behind him so that they were back-to-back.

“I thought I lost you,” he said without preamble, voice hoarse. “I thought I lost you forever and I couldn’t stand it.”

A sudden whiplash of angry vindication blotted out whatever reply Trevelyan might have made to comfort him, the understanding that the pain and confused misery of the last few days was _entirely unnecessary and pointless._ He fell back until his head was pillowed by Dorian’s shoulder and glared up at the Breach in the sky as though this was its doing, a roaring in his ears.

It took a moment for the dull sound of speech to pierce the fog that had crept over him, Dorian’s voice in low, anxious tones. “I saw you fall into the Fade and I thought, ‘this is it’. I didn’t know what would become of you. If you would ever come out. If you would even be the same person when you did. If you might become some twisted, evil thing like Corypheus.”

Trevelyan would have _loved_ becoming some twisted, evil thing like Corypheus. A part of him wanted to reassure Dorian that if _that_ ever happened he would still dearly love him, but then there was every possibility that love manifested in wanting to literally eat him alive, so. Perhaps not.

“And then, after all that terror, after throwing out my voice shouting in battle, after spending every last drop of my mana on tearing the demons there apart, after only just starting to let it sink in that you were gone and I wasn’t going to see you again, you st—” Dorian’s voice broke. It almost never did that. “—Stepped out of the rift, perfectly fine. And then all I could feel was…’ _How dare you_ ’. You—you make me _sick,_ Alexiel Trevelyan. You are a _disease._ ”

Trevelyan couldn’t remember ever empathizing with someone more than in this particular moment.

Yes, _How dare you._

_How dare you make me think I’d lost you._

He remembered how they had sat like this once, so long ago now, when Dorian had all of his pain and betrayal paraded out in front of him for Trevelyan to see, for the whole world to see, because somehow Trevelyan had become the whole world without even realizing it. And he had sat there, not understanding, not knowing how to bridge that gap. Unable to soothe his shame because for the life of him he couldn’t fathom what Dorian had to be ashamed of.

But that was then.

Sometimes Dorian was impossible. Sometimes he was this complicated, impossible knot of emotions. A puzzle that could not be carefully solved, because it made no logical sense, and if he wanted the tender, sweet, warm core inside then he would just have to cut it open.

“I understand your fear,” Trevelyan said slowly, “But if I hadn’t torn that hole into the Fade I would have ruptured all of my organs when I hit the ground.”

Behind him he could feel Dorian shudder. “I must be the most unlucky man in all of Thedas—” he said with a shaky breath. “To have fallen in love with someone who attracts disaster like you.”

Trevelyan felt like a knife. He felt like several knives, suspended in the air, all different shapes and sizes and colors, alike only in that all were bright and razor sharp, all pointing right at Dorian Pavus and his trembling, wounded little heart.

“You love me.”

“I kept trying to tell myself that if I needed to I could find some way to go back—to go back to—” For a few moments Dorian was silent. “Maker, I think about losing you and I can barely function.”

Trevelyan reached back and took his hand, love spreading in his veins like warmth, like life. “So don’t lose me.”

“You say that like it’s an easy thing.”

“It can be.”

“I hate you. You make me physically ill,” Dorian insisted, his fingers like a death grip.

“Careful. Someday I might believe you.”

Mister silver-tongue had nothing to say to that.

Something dangerous and uncomfortable slipped away in the following silence, leaving them simply…in each other’s company. It was a very nice place to be. Trevelyan rather thought that he wanted to be there always, to forever feel Dorian’s thumb as it began to brush gently over his knuckles.

“…I suppose it goes without saying at this point, but I don’t really want us to be over.”

“We aren’t.”

“Oh? Oh good, I…” Dorian sounded so relieved. One of the better things in this world, one of the more _rewarding_ , to hold his heart and hand it back to him undamaged. “Perhaps we could…pretend that I handled this better than I actually did and not…tell anyone.”

“Of course.” Trevelyan decided not to mention Sera.

One of the moons was thin that night, tilted into a grin at its angle in the sky. It felt like a congratulations, and he gave it a small salute.

Behind him, Dorian muttered, “This isn’t going to end well, you know. For either of us.”

“The only way it won’t end well is if one of us tries to end it prematurely like a jackass,” Trevelyan countered.

Dorian laughed, still the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. “…I felt like a ridiculous fool so many times afterwards, but I…needed the space.”

“Next time, you can tell me you need space. I have lots of space. You can take some of mine, instead of making your own.” He squeezed Dorian’s hand again. It was so warm. “Save me some misery, while you’re at it.”

“I’m sorry.”

Trevelyan would have forgiven him without the apology.

But it was still nice to get one.

After a moment he heard, a bit more tentative, “Are you…alright? I mean, from Adamant. What you went through…I can’t even imagine.”

“Are you still worried I’m some impostor wearing my skin? That my mind has been shattered beyond belief?” he drawled.

“Don’t joke. Please.”

Trevelyan turned in his spot so that he was now facing Dorian’s back, running his fingers up and down between his shoulder blades. “I actually rather liked the Fade. Not the _spiders_ of course, and I could have done without the demon, and I …Varric is barely talking to me about Hawke. But! I liked the Fade. I learned a lot. I like learning things.”

Dorian made another strangled chuckle, putting a hand to his forehead. “Of course you did. …Well. I’d rather have you enjoy the visit than traumatized by it, I suppose.”

“You _suppose_.” He moved so that he was on his knees, hands on Dorian’s shoulders, then slipping down, around them, arms encircling his neck. Trevelyan was thinking only of bliss now, kissing his ear. “I wish I could have shared it with you.”

Dorian lightly swatted at him as though he were a gnat, embarrassed. It was quite an accomplishment, to make Dorian Pavus embarrassed. “No offense, but this is one adventure I’m rather glad I wasn’t a part of. The last time a Tevinter mage walked the Fade…bad things happened.”

“What more is there to unleash? A super Blight?” He wished he had more hands. Two simply weren’t enough to touch Dorian all over. “You’re so very _tense_ , my love.”

“It’s been that kind of year.” Trevelyan found a spot where he was ticklish, and Dorian turned to shove him back with an undignified giggle. “—You really are the worst kind of pest, do you know that?”

Trevelyan stuck a hand in his robe again, feeling his abdomen. “You love it.”

Dorian moved out of range, walking backwards towards the tent. “Love being felt up in public? Oh my, yes.”

Trevelyan stalked towards him, baring his teeth. “You love me.”

“You’re not without charms.” He guided them both inside, the world disappearing behind the flap of canvas.

His robes were surprisingly easy to slip off now. Perhaps it was from having so much practice. “Say it again.”

“Buy me dinner first.”

“Maybe I’ll have you for dinner first.”

“Sweet Maker, you certainly have a way of—"

Trevelyan tackled him to his bedroll.

First Dorian pushed. Then, the moment there was any distance between them he pulled in again hard, wrapping their legs together and showering Trevelyan with kisses.

They didn’t leave the tent again until morning.


End file.
